'Our plan is not to monetise, but increase user base here'

PALO ALTO: Facebook seems to have mastered the art of creating an emotional asset through friends, their photos, status messages, emotional wall posts and relationship status. With an estimated valuation of around $20 billion, the company has had buyout offers from virtually every big internet and media major — Microsoft, Google, NBC, AOL, Yahoo, Newscorp, et al.

But Facebook does not appear interested. The third-largest populated 'territory,' with 400 million users, wants to get even more populated. Additional growth can only come from international markets. ET caught up with people responsible for this job at Facebook's Palo Headquarters — head of international growth Javier Olivan and manager for international marketing Meenal J Balar . They talk about Facebook's new privacy controls, the ban in China, competition from Twitter, their India strategy and the future of social networking .Excerpts:

Which are the biggest markets for Facebook? Where does India rank among them?

More than two-thirds of users are from international markets, and the rest from the US. In terms of users, UK, Indonesia, Turkey, Canada are large. India is on par with Germany, Spain, Italy and France. Indonesia will soon be one of the biggest. India currently has about 8 million active users (2% of Facebook's 400 million users).

Does Facebook see Google's Orkut and microblogging services like Twitter as major competition?

Twitter is interesting, but we view it as a completely different service. For us, Facebook is a service that represents 'Me'. It's how I like to represent myself to my Friends. Twitter is a one-way connection, where people can just follow a person, say Amitabh Bachchan.

Our features around status updates can be considered as microblogging, but it's with more user control. We are much more focused on authenticity and 'friends'. Orkut was the first social network and it's a competitor. Many people are using it in India. But with products like Facebook Zero, we're on a great trajectory. In India, our goal is to become the number one social network, (by beating Orkut), this year.

What are the major revenue sources for Facebook?

Facebook's revenue model is advertising. Social networking offers a great business model. This is how it works: Advertisers select which group of users they want to target. We don't share any private user information with advertisers. But they have access to users' 'likes', interests, hobbies, locations, etc, if users have made them 'public'. Apart from ads, Facebook Credits, and Gift Shop are minor sources of income source.

Will Facebook always carry the current blue format?

Facebook, in many ways, is like a Coca Cola can. Almost 90% of Coke you get in any country in the world is the same. But there is around 10% of localisation. It is similar with Facebook. In Spain, fans talk about Real Madrid. In India, users love cricket (and the IPL).

This makes the kind of chats and discussions very local. In certain countries, we are going a step further. In Japan, our aim is to fully localise Facebook. In the Middle East, 30% of the online population is on Facebook. So, we will keep innovating.

What's Facebook's strategy to deal with controversies and intermittent bans in some countries?

Facebook's mission is to make the world more open and connected, by free flow of information. But it's unfortunate that many governments have policies that are in direct conflict with our mission. Currently, we are aware Facebook is banned in China and Vietnam. We were blocked in Pakistan last month.

Bangladesh also banned Facebook due to an online group named 'Everybody Draw Muhammad Day'. (The bans were later lifted). We are trying to work with the governments on how these issues can be resolved. India too asked Facebook to withdraw access to a particular page on the same group, and we complied. We take the law of the land seriously.

Facebook's database is now the world's largest repository of photos and user content. What are the tools deployed to deal with such content?

We have a combination of reactive methods and proactive methods. Once a content is flagged as inappropriate, it's reported to our user operations in Austin, Dublin and Palo Alto. If a piece of content is against our terms of our service, it is pulled out. The user community is really good at flagging inappropriate content. Then there are proactive methods like algorithms that determine suspicious behaviour and pattern.